School Leavers Survey

This week’s SOCRMx activity activity is as follows:

  1. Visit the UK Data Service database of these essays, and read a number of them (ideally between 6-10). Make some notes about what you notice about the content, use of language, or other features of these essays, and where there are similarities and differences between them that you find interesting.
  2. Write a blog post, consider each these of the following three questions in turn:

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Lying with statistics

This week’s* SOCRMx tasK:

“… locate an example of lying with statistics—whether inadvertent or not—in the wild, online…One place to look for potential examples of ‘lying with statistics’ is in news reports about economics, science, health, education, politics, or another field where numerical data get reported. Other possibilities are advertisements, government or company reports, marketing information, and even popular memes. Your example might be a table, graph, infographic, or short written passage. Continue reading “Lying with statistics”

Working with images as a research method

1. Think of three good research questions that could be answered using this approach.

  • An examination of the adoption of Microsoft’s Teams in a Year 7 cohort (researcher created data – visualisation)
  • A study of the use of a new work-based ‘smart space’ (researcher created data – photo and video records)
  • A week in gaming: a study of the gaming activities of five Year 6 pupils over the course of one week (participant-created video and photo diaries)2. What assumptions about the nature of knowledge (epistemology) seem to be associated with this approach?

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Working with images

This week’s challenge involved working with images. There were three possible activities to choose from. I chose option 1:

Option 1: Collect and analyse images. Take a tour of your workplace or your neighbourhood with a camera, create a collage of images that represent a particular concept or theme you are interested in exploring. For example, you might choose ‘rules’ as a theme, and take pictures of things that, directly or indirectly, appear to convey rules about the space you are in; what people are allowed or not allowed to do.

The resulting collection is hereContinue reading “Working with images”

Ethnography as a research method

https://www.flickr.com/photos/kerim/43999485/

1. Think of three good research questions that could be answered using this approach.

It’s worth noting that I have a personal interest in each of the three possible areas of study outlined below.  As Blum Malley and Hawkins advise, “no matter what, the most important factor when selecting your own site is choosing a place or space or group of people to whom you already feel connected in some way, either by direct membership, burgeoning interest, or cultural/political belief…’ Continue reading “Ethnography as a research method”

Observation

From: https://researchmethodsgdansk.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/p2.jpg

This week’s adventure in research involved engaging in an observation and taking notes. This was the challenge:

“Find a public space that interests you and spend a few hours (over a period of a few days, ideally) making some field notes about what you see going on. The following questions might be useful as a guide to your field notes:

  • Where are you? – describe the setting in as much detail as you can.
  • Why did you choose this setting?
  • What activities are people undertaking? What interactions are occurring?
  • What sparks your curiosity about where you are and what is going on?
  • If you were new to this culture, what might you wonder about?”

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